The Alden Cooperative

 apartment building, 1927_construction, housing cooperative, Neo-Renaissance (architecture)

194-foot, 16-story Neo-Renaissance cooperative-apartment building completed in 1927 for Bing & Bing. Designed by Emery Roth, it is clad in brown brick above a 2-story base of rusticated limestone, with a grey granite water table. The 3-bay main entrance is centered on the east facade facing Central Park. It has a bronze-and-glass revolving door set in a stone surround with egg-and-dart moldings along the inner and outer edges, and carved ornament above including a female face, fruit garlands, flowers, and scrolls. To either side is a narrower, secondary door of bronze and glass, also slightly recessed. The entry area is covered by a grey iron-and-glass suspended canopy, the corners of which are highlighted by iron cartouches flanked by griffins. Slightly-projecting, 2-story piers frame the entry, with capitals featuring a rosette and garland between winged putti. On the piers between the two 2nd-floor windows above the entrance are additional putti and ribbons above the brackets that hold the iron cables suspending the canopy below. To either side of the entry the base has three bays of paired windows, followed by three single-windows, and an end bay of a wider single-window. The base is capped by a dentiled band course; at the center there is a broken pediment, with stone piers rising above it at the 3rd floor. Narrower, projecting panels overlay the two piers between the three windows, each decorated with winged putti and hanging floral pendants. The upper floors have the same window arrangement, and a dentiled stone cornice runs above the 3rd floor, where the center window is topped by a rounded pediment broken by a cartouche. The final bit of stone ornament highlighting the entry area is the surround at the center window on the 4th floor, with a stone panel above that has two garlands along its upper edge and is flanked by sculpted angels in flight. Below many of the windows on the upper floors are cleverly disguised air-conditioning vents, covered by iron grilles with a honeycomb pattern like that seen on the grilles over the ground-floor windows. A stone band course runs below the 12th floor, with a stone surround (outlined with intricate carved ornament) at the center window and the middle window of the groups of three toward the ends. Below these windows are stone balusters, and above them are broken rounded pediments. There are stone spandrels between the 12th & 13th floors at the windows immediately on either side, and stone round-arches above all three windows in each group at the 13th floor. The center window in all three groups also has a stone surround (but without the carved outer portion) at the 14th floor, each topped by a keystone and cornice. The 15th floor, set off by a narrow string course, has stone surrounds at every window, as well as stone on the upper parts of the piers, ornamented with swags. The main roof line is marked by a modillioned and dentiled stone cornice. The 16th-story penthouse is set back from the lower roof line and features various roof decks, as well as a glassed-in solarium on the south side. Centered on the east side of the roof is a tall, cubic water tower enclosure clad in brick. Each side has a trio of tall round-arched openings, and there is a cartouche below them on the east face. The enclosure is topped by modillions and a low-sloped pyramidal roof.

The south facade along 82nd Street has a quite high granite water table, tallest at the west end due to the slope of the site. It is pierced only by an entrance to the underground parking garage at the west end, and a metal service door near the east end. There are nine single-windows in the middle, followed on either side by a bay of paired windows, three more single-windows (the middle one on the east replaced by the door at the ground floor), and a wider single-window at the end bays. The band courses and cornices from the east facade carry over onto this elevation. The ornament at the top floors is repeated at the outer bays of three windows, and along the top floor.

The building wraps around a central courtyard, with an opening to the northwest. The rear elevations are also brick, without ornament, had have a mix of single-, double-, and triple-windows.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1984, with 250 apartments.

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